CCTV by premises type
Camera count is a property of the building, not the budget. A shop with one door and a till needs four views; a farm with three outlying buildings needs sixteen and a plan for the cable. Each guide below is written for one premises type — what to cover, what goes wrong there, the cameras that suit it, and the UK rules that actually apply. We supply the equipment; you or your installer fits it.
CCTV for shops and retail units
4 and 8 cameras
Till, entrance, stockroom and rear exit — the four views a single-unit shop needs, the lens each one takes, and the ICO rules on signage, staff and fitting rooms.
Mount the till camera opposite the operator at about 2.4 m: a camera in the ceiling above the till records the top of two heads and settles nothing.
Read the shops guide →CCTV for warehouses and distribution units
8, 16 and 32 cameras
Loading bays, racking aisles, mezzanine and yard perimeter: how many channels a unit needs, what lens an aisle takes, and why storage is the binding constraint.
At 32 channels the median in-stock kit records fewer days than at eight — doubling the cameras roughly halves the days on the same drive.
Read the warehouses guide →CCTV for offices and business premises
4 and 8 cameras
Entrance, reception, comms room and car park — the views an office needs, the rooms that take no camera at all, and what the ICO expects before you monitor staff.
Cover the doors, not the desks: a camera down a bank of desks is a conversation with your staff and, in practice, a DPIA.
Read the offices guide →CCTV for construction sites and compounds
4 and 8 cameras
Choosing the guide that fits your site
Premises type decides more than budget does. A shop is a till and a doorway and the framing of both; a warehouse is docks, aisle lenses and the storage arithmetic that decides whether last month still exists; a school is a perimeter plus a set of data protection duties an ordinary business does not carry. Start with the guide for your building, then size the system.
If your premises is not one of the seven — a self-storage site, a care home, a garage, a place of worship — the closest guide is usually the right starting point, and the business CCTV systems page covers the general sizing rules. We supply the equipment and can specify a system from a sketch or a list of views; we do not carry out installations.